Korea Times Article:
Swedish-Korean Adoptee’s Pioneering Research On Flawed Adoptions Gains Belated Recognition.
Posted to Paperslip on September 18th, 2025.
Original Korea Times article first published September 11th, 2025.
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Paperslip Note:
It's good to see an early pioneer in Korean Adoption research being recognized for his work, in this Korea Times article fittingly published on September 11th, 2025.
September 11th, 2020 is the first day that I realized that I might have had a twin, who had likely died at my Korean Adoption Agency KSS (Korea Social Service), and who had likely been switched. I had only realized in 2018 that I myself was switched — though I was not switched with my twin. September 11th, 2022 was also the deadline for submission of cases to the Second Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC 2) Investigation into Overseas Adoption. I submitted my case to TRC 2 by the September 11th, 2022 deadline, but was forced to withdraw my case in March 2023 due to abuse by two DKRG leaders who still have yet to explain their actions or apologize.
Tobias Hubinette is also a distant DNA cousin of mine whose work has long been referenced on Paperslip.org:
Academic Papers
Books
Unlike certain individuals (I am not speaking of Tobias Hubinette), I have no difficulty giving credit where it's due.
I first read Tobias Hubinette’s work back when I first began to come out of the fog in late 2017.
When I later began to investigate systemic switching within Korean adoption, Tobias' work helped me understand the background of the Korean Adoption system.
On December 18th, 2020, I became the first person to submit any cases involving Korean Adoptees to the Second Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC 2), albeit informally. Through a contact, I provided the head of the TRC 2 with case study summaries documenting multiple instances of switched Korean Adoptees whom I had identified since 2018. This early submission preceded the TRC 2’s formal Investigation into Overseas Adoption by nearly two years, which officially began on December 9th, 2022. Although my case was among the first 34 accepted by the official TRC 2 investigation, I was without explanation or apology pushed out of the movement by two DKRG leaders just two days earlier, on December 7th, 2022. Following multiple incidents of abuse by DKRG, I formally withdrew my case in March 2023. The reasons behind my abrupt exclusion remain unexplained. The same DKRG leaders who pushed me out of the movement later went to the media about switching, the topic I had been researching since 2018 — despite neither one of them being switched. Ironically, neither DKRG leader received a TRC 2 judgment due to insufficient evidence in their respective cases.
On March 26th, 2025, the S. Korean Government formally recognized switching - the specific systemic abuse I had been researching since 2018 - as a human rights abuse.
SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) made an amazing one hour documentary about my case, which was released on December 24th, 2022 - marking the first time in history that systemic switching was acknowledged in S. Korean or any worldwide media. Notably, the SBS documentary was released just after the TRC 2 Investigation into Overseas Adoption began on December 9th, 2022. My case was accepted by TRC 2 just days after I was pushed out of the movement by DKRG, who had the audacity to try to use the SBS film about my case to promote “their” cause after egregiously shutting me out.
While individual instances of switching had been acknowledged prior to the release of the SBS documentary on my case, systemic switching had never been thoroughly investigated until I began my research in 2018. That work directly contributed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) formally identifying switching as a human rights violation. In its Interim Report released on March 26th, 2025, TRC 2 echoes—almost verbatim—the definition of switching that I first codified in 2018 and submitted to the TRC chair on December 18th, 2020, as part of the preface to the case study summaries of switched Adoptees.
Thank you Tobias for your early foundational work - not specifically related to switching, but related to the system of Korean Adoption overall. I am happy to acknowledge those who preceded me in their research about the history of Korean Adoption.
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Korea Times Article:
“Interview: Swedish-Korean adoptee’s pioneering research on flawed adoptions gains belated recognition
Tobias Hubinette, a Korean-born adoptee to Sweden and senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University / Courtesy of Tobias Hubinette
By Lee Hyo-jin
Published Sep 11, 2025 7:00 am KST
Tobias Hubinette’s findings on illegal international adoptions confirmed by investigations in Seoul and Stockholm
Two decades ago, when Tobias Hubinette began publishing research papers on the dark history of Korea’s overseas adoption program, his work was dismissed as radical, even extremist.
Now, the Swedish adoptee — born in Korea as Lee Sam-dol — is seeing both Seoul and Stockholm acknowledge what he has long maintained.
Earlier this year, state-run commissions in both countries found widespread human rights violations in intercountry adoptions from the 1960s to 1990s, when the adoption of Korean babies to the West was at its peak.
“I’m very happy about the development that is happening, both in the receiving countries and in the countries of origin,” Hubinette said in an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul Monday.
Adopted to Sweden in 1972 when he was just 7 months old, Hubinette became active in the Korean adoptee community in the 1990s. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Korean studies from Stockholm University and is now a senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University.
Hubinette’s early research uncovered alleged irregularities in intercountry adoption records and called into question Korea’s adoption system, which sent roughly 200,000 children to the West between the 1960s and 1990s. His detailed review of documents traced the origins of transnational adoption — or, in his words, “forced child migration.”
“The fact-based conclusions I presented 20 years ago seemed crazy at the time. There was a lot of resistance,” Hubinette said, noting that while he was occasionally invited to conferences in Korea to discuss his research, his work received little recognition.
“At that time, Koreans were not ready to hear it,” he recalled. “I guess there was still a sense of shame, and many other social issues were at the forefront. Adoption issues just weren’t seen as a priority. And for someone like me, who was viewed mainly as a Swede, it was also difficult to be taken seriously in Korea.”
Korea has often faced criticism for once being the world’s largest “baby exporter” in international adoptions. But Hubinette argues that the country of origin should not bear all the blame.
He argues that Korea’s political and social circumstances, combined with sweeping social changes in the West, created the conditions for the deeply flawed adoption system.
“It was invented in Korea, but not by Koreans alone. It was created by Koreans and Westerners together during and after the Korean War,” he said. “At first, it was only about sending out mixed-race children, because the government at the time was obsessed with ethnic purity.”
Hubinette said the so-called 1968 revolution in the West — marked by contraception, legalized abortion and the rise of second-wave feminism — led to a collapse in domestic adoptions, leaving prospective parents to look abroad. Korea emerged as a primary source.
By the late 1970s, the system had become deeply corrupt under Korea’s military dictatorship, the researcher noted.
“That’s when the worst adoptions happened, in the 1980s and 1990s,” Hubinette said. “Private agencies were running child welfare in Korea, closely tied to the government. Some even managed to survive the fall of the dictatorship.”
A photo from Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report on overseas adoption released in March shows Korean babies and children aboard a plane to Denmark in December 1984. According to a TRC official, these children lacked appropriate care during their journey, as the primary focus was on sending as many children as possible in one plane. Courtesy of TRC
The Swedish Korean adoptee’s own search for his origins has been fraught with uncertainty.
Classified as a “foundling,” Hubinette has little reliable information about his early life in Korea. According to adoption documents, he was discovered as an infant on a moving train when he was about a month old.
Despite decades of searching, he has never been able to find his birth parents.
Yet Hubinette’s persistence in researching adoption issues is now bearing fruit, as governments in Korea and Europe begin to confront long-standing allegations of corruption and irregularities in international adoptions.
In March, Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report citing state oversight failures in flawed international adoptions. The findings showed that among the roughly 140,000 international adoptions conducted between 1955 and 1999, more than 8,000 children were sent to Sweden alone.
Three months later, the Swedish government released the results of its own sweeping investigation into international adoptions, including those from Korea, which found that thousands of cases involved unethical or illegal practices. The report recommended that Swedish authorities apologize to adoptees and their birth parents, provide compensation and create a DNA database to help reunite families.
Stakeholders have until October to provide feedback, Hubinette said, after which the Swedish government will decide which recommendations to implement.
The prospect of change offers hope to thousands of adoptees who have spent decades searching for the truth. But Hubinette noted that for many, it comes too late.
“It’s good that these are happening now, but it’s very late. Many birth parents and adoptive parents have already died,” he said. “And many adoptees themselves have also died.”
Lee Hyo-jin
I cover South Korea's foreign policy, defense and security issues on the Korean Peninsula. Before that, I reported on immigration policies and human rights — topics I continue to follow closely. I strive to gain an accurate understanding of the issues I cover and am particularly interested in stories that amplify often overlooked voices. Tips and story ideas via email are always welcome.